May 15, 2015 | The Good Word
I held a book parallel to the floor at his eye level, so that he couldn’t see the cover or spine or back cover, just white lines of pages at the top of the book.
“What book is this?” I asked.
He recognized the book by its size and shape and told me.
“Who is the author of this book?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he answered.
“Perhaps it would help if we changed our perspective,” I said, as I turned the book so that he could see the spine.
He read the author’s last name.
“What’s the author’s full name?”
“I don’t know,” he answered.
I turned the book again, this time so that he could see the front cover. He read the author’s whole name, and could now also tell me the full title and subtitle of the book.
One afternoon last week, this was how my son and I began a discussion about perspective.
He was disappointed that there were things he couldn’t do until he finished the things he had to do. I talked about what the experiences of other children who are in school from 8:30 to 3:00 each day might be like. I talked about the things he had the privilege of doing every day that other kids couldn’t.
My goal wasn’t really a lesson in comparison. Ultimately, my goal was to help him see his situation from a different perspective.
I’ve commented before that self-pity is a dangerous bedfellow and if you let him, he’ll convince you that there are all these things that you need and deserve and ought not to have to deal with because you are you and somehow, you’re just entitled to get what you want and not get what you don’t want.
At the end of a week of not sleeping particularly well, I came down with an absolutely wretched sore throat that had me up in the night attempting to gargle salt water (that ended badly on this occasion…), and eventually sipping on hot water with honey and lemon into the wee hours of the morning.
Self-pity might be quick to whisper: Oh this is awful. You don’t deserve this. You have so much going on, why should this be happening to you?
But if I lean into the Truth a little harder, I’ll hear a very different message: The Lord is with you, even here in this circumstance. What a privilege it is that you live in a place where you have access to excellent medical care if you need it, and you have the resources to pay for it.
Self-pity is often quick to point out where things are going right for everyone else. While this whisper may not surface in words, it can give you the vague illusion that you’re the only one really suffering. Everyone else in your sleepy little town is fast asleep tonight at 4 am, while you are awake and miserable.
But lean a little closer to the Truth and you’ll remember: People are suffering all over the world. Within a few minutes online just today, I saw friends in the hospital with their children, a friend asking for prayer for a father who had a heart attack, and imagery from ReSurge International, requesting support for children around the world living in poverty who need access to plastic surgery that will change their lives forever.
You can’t put a price tag on perspective, can you?
When our circumstances feel less than ideal, it’s easy for us to dwell on what’s wrong and forget to give thanks for all that’s right.
Truthfully, there are thousands of gifts for the counting in our every day lives. And sometimes just choosing gratefulness for the good is enough to lift your eyes above the bad and change your perspective.
No, I didn’t want to be in bed sick that morning, but aren’t I so fortunate my husband works from home and is able to help with the children and let me rest?
Perhaps you can’t afford something you’ve been hoping for, even saving up for, for a long time — but how many other gifts are you surrounded by? Start counting and be amazed that it’s hard to stop.
Perhaps, like the Apostle Paul, there’s this ‘thorn in the flesh’ — this circumstance you feel trapped in, and you can’t see past it to any good possibilities. But after asking the Lord to take it away, Paul heard the Lord say, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in your weakness.”
We recently had a couple of days at the beach together with family visiting from far away. I wondered how our little two-year-old Belle might feel about the big, crashing waves, perhaps feeling a little cold in a wet bathing suit with a breeze. From her perspective, the waves crashing just twenty feet away are way above her head, and when one comes in quickly, it’s above her knees in just a moment.
But, she’s surprised me each and every time we’ve been to the beach. She wants to hold a hand, and head straight for the water. She is joyful and delighted to be at the beach. She gets knocked down, but she gets up again. She gets water in her eyes, but she recovers quickly and is ready to get back to splashing.
Something in her perspective tells her: this place is a gift. I’m happy to be here. I’m going to enjoy every moment of this place.
Oh, what the Lord can do, both in and through our souls when we truly see that our lives are so full of grace, so full of gifts!
Turn the book over today, friends. Try to see your circumstances from a different perspective. Look for reasons to give thanks, to be brave, to love with abundant grace, and just keep on saying thank you.
Take off your shoes, remember: Your weakness creates a glorious space for His all-sufficient strength. Lean hard on Him.
xCC
May 10, 2015 | The Parenthood
I’m so glad I didn’t miss the moment. He ran in with big eyes and a happy face — Mom, I made something for you! Come see! Sometimes I’m tempted make excuses because I have other things to do, but this time, somehow, thankfully I knew better.
He led me out the door, and into the carport, where he’d created a flower arrangement for me in the wagon. One flower from a beautiful blooming dogwood tree, one azalea, two different camellias, and a wild flower from the yard, thrown in for good measure.
I grab my phone to make sure I capture the moment.
We bring the flowers inside and they float in a bowl and make me smile for a couple of days.
My eldest, these days, I smile and shake my head when I think of him. I’m so proud of the sweet little young man he is becoming. He cares about making good choices and is genuinely remorseful when he makes mistakes. I marvel as he adds four digit numbers to four digit numbers faster than he can tie his shoes.
I grin from ear to ear reading the creative writing stories he scribbles into his green composition journal. His illustrations are so creative, I just can’t help but smile, breathe a deep sigh and soak it in. We play card games and laugh at how many times one of us has won, and the other hasn’t.
When I stop to think about it, this has been six years of amazing.
The precious little fellow in the middle. A wild card — I never know what to expect. At times he is so tender, so incredibly gentle. We snuggle up in his bed to read two books before his nap every day. Then I tickle his back and sing two songs. Last week he offered to tickle my back and sing me two songs instead. I often make up the songs as I go, so he followed suit, and the results were hilarious.
Sometimes when he wakes up in the morning, his big eyes stare straight through his Dad and me, it’s as if he visited another planet over night and he’s returned, completely speechless. He cracks unexpected jokes and we all laugh.
Four years of my heart just melting over and over, with this little guy.
And the baby girl. We find ourselves saying “This is the best” almost every day. The moment when she’s just woken up, and she hugs one of us with both arms, both legs, her head tucked up under our chins. Or the moment when I’m laying her down for her nap and her voice just coos like a dove, “I wuv hyu, Mama.” I’ve left her room in tears before. Overwhelmed. It’s just so precious.
She is also feisty and cheeky and still so often needs to be reigned in. So full of big emotions in such a tiny frame. It’s impossible to tickle her and watch her giggle and not feel like your own heart is about to burst. She was the gift that arrived four months before I knew I needed her, and has been giving joy by the bucketload to HH and to me ever since.
Two years of delight. Two years of joy with this one.
The thing about parenthood that has surprised me the most has been the gifts I’ve received in the process. A card that the eldest wrote me, full of kindness, love and thoughtful words, holds a place in my Bible. The hilarious moments the middle one has created with a funny comment or joke, I try to write them down, so that I can go back and enjoy them again. I knew parenthood was going to be about giving. I knew I’d be making sacrifices. I just never realized how incredible the return on investment would be.
Two years ago, we put a hand-me-down “big sister” t-shirt on our four-month-old baby girl as an April Fool’s Day joke. Some folks were congratulatory, some folks joked, and some folks were pretty honest about saying they thought we were crazy.
But parenthood has a way of being a bit like a flower arrangement in the wagon in the carport. You have to get up, go looking for the moments.
Moses was out with the sheep — and he had to turn aside from what he was doing to go see that burning bush. And he didn’t immediately recognize it as holy ground — the voice of God spoke to him, Take off your shoes.
The eldest is reading stories he wrote to his two younger siblings. This is holy ground.
I’m so thankful to look back at the example of my Mother, who has never stopped laboring, right from the day I was born. Labors of love, one after another, her gifts to me and my siblings. Selfless. Tireless. Continuously generous. Thank you, Mama. This is what it looks like to pour yourself out in love — we are privileged recipients.
Lord, help me love these children like my Mama loved me.
Although we don’t live in the biggest house or drive the nicest cars in town, we feel like we’re about the richest family in our little town, because these three children are ours, and they’re like those flowers in the carport. It takes effort — at times, it’s doggedly hard. But be still, take off your shoes, look carefully and see — there are so many gifts in this journey called parenthood. I could start counting and I’d run out of paper before I ran out of gifts on the list.
Sometimes you have to turn aside to see your gifts, friends. Take off your shoes and see the holy in your every day. There are flowers in your carport too — you might just need to make a little effort to see them.
And around late October? We’re looking forward to an exponential increase in joy. We’ll be unwrapping the gift of one more little person joining our family.
We’re excited, we’re thrilled and we’re not April Foolin’ this time.
Here’s to bucketloads more flowers in our carport.
xCC
Apr 17, 2015 | The Good Word
While enjoying new and different books with my children these first few years as a parent, I’ve rediscovered lots of favorite books from my childhood. One lovely rediscovery I enjoyed from the Bear’s kindergarten year at homeschool was Madeline.
Ludwig Bemelmans’ simple, rhyming narrative is wonderfully engaging, and his matching illustrations, which guide you through the streets of Paris are so charming:
In two straight lines
they broke their bread
and brushed their teeth
and went to bed.
They smiled at the good
and frowned at the bad
and sometimes they were very sad.
In the book, the twelve little girls who walk in those two straight lines smile at a nobleman caring for his horse, frown at a thief running off with a purse and are very sad at the sight of a wounded soldier walking on crutches in the snow.
Over the past few weeks, it seems like memories of a dozen different experiences in my life have come to mind, and I (mostly) smile at them now, seeing how good they were for my life, my soul, my walk with the Lord.
But at the time? There was a lot more frowning.
When I finished my Masters’ degree and my first job was at a Pawn Shop, or when Hero Hubs and I were in our first year ministering in a new country together, and life was hard, and we felt isolated, and it was totally unclear how we were going to make it financially… I can furrow my brow just remembering what it felt like. Frown.
No one has the ability to completely step outside themselves and see their situation from an un-invested point of view, but once each challenging season has finished, and I’ve had a chance to regroup, perhaps heal a little and catch my breath, I’ve had the privilege of beginning to recognize a few of the incredible things that the Lord was doing in my life during that hard time.
A friend of mine lost her grandmother last week, and as she shared about how she was feeling and I talked with her about that long and strange journey called grief, the opportunity to remember and think about my own grief in losing my Dad arose. While I still frown at the thought of losing him, I can also smile in thinking about how near the Lord was to me in that brokenhearted season. He gave me so many gifts, as I heard important words I needed to hear from complete strangers at the hospital, or received smiles from my four-month-old baby girl who was a fountain of joy in a season of sorrow.
While none of us knows for sure what lies ahead on the path of our lives, if there is a lesson I could permanently seal on my heart (and perhaps yours?) from watching this pattern over the years, I’d remind myself of this truth:
For the Lord God is a sun and shield;
the Lord will give grace and glory.
No good thing will He withhold
from those who walk uprightly. {Ps. 84:11}
Even though our walks with God may not be perfect, because we are covered in the upright walk of Christ, we can trust that God is a sun — giving us light — and a shield — giving us protection. He breathes grace and glory into every situation we will ever face.
And the things that we would initially want to frown at — a job that will teach us a lifetime of lessons, including humility, or a season that will teach us to trust Him — are actually good reasons to smile. He knows that the difficult seasons produce beautiful fruit in our souls — and, how beautiful!, He does not want to withhold those good things from us.
So here’s the challenge in all this, for both your heart and mine: the next time we receive some bad news, what if we just tried to smile at the bad? And to breathe words of faith through those teeth that we’re gently bringing together — God, you don’t withhold good things from Your children. You breathe life, You give grace and You make hard places glorious. I trust You, right here.
Lord, help us all to see, in our lives, Your glory.
xCC
For Erin and for Sydney
Apr 10, 2015 | The Good Word
It was a week that didn’t feel particularly holy. The run-up to Easter Sunday was more like a stilted, slow limp — a week where I was already pulling a meal out of the freezer on Monday night because I was tired and I. just. couldn’t.
A wretched sore throat kept me awake past my bedtime Sunday night. The kids were out of sorts with sniffles and coughs, and even though we’ve been going to bed earlier than most of your grandparents probably do, dear reader, still the unusual nightly interruptions from the toddler who either just really needed a sip of water or had this dream about a puppy and there was a spider… it was enough to make a girl want to hit snooze twelve times when the alarm went off in the morning.
So, I wasn’t feeling great. The kids weren’t feeling great. Even the Hero Hubs, who is made of granite, marble and gloriously-dogged-consistency, felt, ya know, maybe 98% instead of his usual 100.
A family member an ocean away passed away, and we felt far away, heavy-hearted, thinking of his wife, his daughters, the sad way things came to an end.
The week dragged on, and it was about Thursday — I am regularly willing to admit to you all that I am a slow-learner — it hit me: If I can turn my attention to Christ, I can identify with Christ, especially in my sufferings.
Yes, I read the Bible pretty much daily, and still — it was Thursday. The week before Easter.
I pondered these thoughts, twirled them around in my heart like a lock of hair around my finger, and tried to just keep turning my attention.
Of all weeks, Lord, yes — this is a good week, and, strange as it sounds to say it, it’s a good week for suffering.
This was the week of Your greatest suffering.
You lived out Your suffering with determination, knowing it had a world of purpose.
You saw the joy set before You, and so You endured the Cross.
A dear friend called, who’d been going through some serious health issues and some significant suffering, and her voice beamed at the other end of the phone as she proclaimed that same revelation: we meet God in our sufferings, He uses our sufferings for our own good, and she added some powerful thoughts for me to keep twirling: “I love God so much, I just want to make sure that I am honoring Him, and pleasing Him, even in my suffering.”
When I don’t feel good? It’s probably fair to say I consider it a completely valid get-out-of-jail-free-card to kind of be a little bit of a brat. Sarcastic with my kids. Overly dramatic. Less than purposeful with my time, my thoughts, my words… my life.
But suffering is a Refiner’s fire, isn’t it? This place that draws these things out, from deep in our hearts. They bubble up to the surface, because the fire’s turned up under us, and, if we’ll let Him, the Refiner can skim that dross right off of us. If we’ll let Him.
If we’ll let Him.
I thought and listened and prayed. If I believe Your Word, my suffering has purpose, too. I can identify with you in Your sufferings and remember what You endured for me. I will find strength and purpose when I find You in my sufferings. They will produce endurance, perseverance, character, and so many good things in me. I am being made more like You.
Instead of presenting me with a glass of water and a fluffy pillow, life presented me with opportunities to give, to serve others, and to find joy in doing so.
For Jesus, the week that began with everyone crying Hosanna! quickly transitioned to behind-the-scenes schemes to capture Him, a mock trial, severe beatings, and eventually death on a Cross. But in His sufferings, He just kept serving.
He cleansed the temple. He kept teaching. He kept healing. He laid aside His garments and took a towel to wash His disciples’ feet.
The God who could’ve fought back in 1,000 ways took the beating, to serve the world by saving the world. He took the beating, stretched out His arms, put on our sin, and while Heaven looked away, when He’d given everything He was supposed to give, and taken everything He was supposed to take (for us) He gave His life, too.
The time between the Cross and the Resurrection must’ve been so hard for the disciples — when they could not yet see the purpose of the sufferings of Jesus. I imagine them, swallowed up by their own pain in losing Him. It was perhaps the longest, most miserable low point of their lives. They’d left everything to follow Jesus, and He was gone.
But hope was ahead!
And Sunday morning, the tomb was empty.
What did that mean? Jesus was Who He said He was and is Who He says He is. The Crux of the whole narrative of the Christian faith hinges on this very point: Jesus rose from the dead.
It changed everything. It renewed the disciples’ purpose, transformed their faith, and changed them from a motley band of unexpected choices to bold proclaimers of the Truth who turned the world upside down.
But what about us, two thousand years later?
We still live in a broken world, and we will suffer while we’re here. We watch the news and our hearts sink, thinking of the precious lives senselessly taken in Kenya. The refugees whose months are turning to years of displacement in Syria. A local boy lost his life in a farming accident and our town grieves this life cut short.
Easter has come, Jesus has risen — but everything isn’t fixed yet. This world still feels broken.
But we also live on a visited planet, walked by God’s Son, Who demonstrated the power to overcome evil, disease, sickness, storms and trials of every kind, and then, even death itself. This is where our story finds hope.
Where is hope without the Resurrection of Jesus? Where is hope if this is all there is?
Before He went to the cross Jesus warned His disciples that difficult roads lie ahead of them. {John 16} They’d be kicked out of the synagogues. People would kill them and genuinely think they were doing God a favor. Jesus explained that he wasn’t going to always be with them, He was going to the Father.
But He spoke words of hope to His disciples: “Indeed the hour is coming, yes, has now come, that you will be scattered, each to his own, and will leave Me alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me. These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”
Like Jesus’ disciples, in the time between the Savior hanging on the Cross and the Resurrection, we live in an in-between. The Resurrection has taken place and Jesus has overcome. The world is still broken, but He is coming again. He is making all things new. In the meantime, we will have tribulation, trials and suffering, but now, He is with us.
Whether you’ve experienced a great and terrible loss or you’re just trying to keep putting one foot in front of the other in your day to day life, the gloriously good news of Jesus overcoming death is the hope we’ve all been waiting for.
This world feels very broken right now, but this world isn’t all there is, and the story’s not over yet.
Your story is not over yet — and you have the daily opportunity to make this place a better place to be. When you suffer, know that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and He saves those who are crushed in Spirit. {Ps. 34:18}
He is our hope, and He is near.
We can find purpose, we can find redemption, we can even find joy in those trials. He has overcome, and an entire world of people who believe His story can declare this Good News together: this story isn’t over yet!
xCC
Mar 20, 2015 | Stories, The Good Word, The Parenthood
There’s this thing about the childlike faith thing that unravels me a little bit — I’m not sure I can put my finger on it. Maybe it’s because I see my children as just a little wild, just a little spontaneous… just a little too young for me to figure out how faith like a child can get it — the grand and glorious goodness of a humble and holy God.
Does it take wisdom to take Jesus to heart?
Doesn’t it?
For all my sensibilities, I would’ve thought so.
But a little child shall lead them…
An impromptu prompting came to my mind on a homeschooling Monday morning. Our sweet little Tiger Tank safely dropped off at preschool, the Belle beside me crunching a few crumbs at the table, the Bear and I sat down to begin our day, and I laid my big Bible on the table, and turned to Galatians.
Can you read chapter 6, verse 7 for me?
I helped him find the way.
He began: “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that will he reap.”
We talked about the big words in this verse, and then about sowing seeds and reaping harvests. If I sow an apple seed, will an orange tree grow? No. Since the beginning, God created the world so that the seeds we sow will reap a harvest according to the seed. And if someone says I can plant these apple seeds and grow orange trees? They are deceiving me. (Or trying to.) We talked and questioned and talked a bit more.
We’ll be planting our garden soon. And we talked it out: our cucumber seeds will give us cucumber plants. Our tomato seeds will give us tomato plants.
But what other kinds of seeds can we sow?
We looked back at the adjacent page, laid open for the reading, and remembered something we talked about last year: the fruits of the Spirit. We can sow seeds of kindness. If you are kind to your brother, he is likely to be more kind to you. We can sow seeds of gentleness. We can sow seeds of patience, goodness, self-control.
And can we sow bad seeds? And what happens if we do? What will we reap if we hurt? If we’re mean? Don’t you receive your own discipline if you hurt your brother or sister? These are different seeds that grow different fruits.
He took the concept to heart, and ran with it. It took him a moment to put it into words, but then I was so struck my jaw hung open, hearing his observation:
“The bad roots tangle the good roots and pull the good roots, and they break off the good roots so that they can’t find water.”
I hadn’t even mentioned the word “roots” — or thought about roots yet, for that matter.
Wide-eyed at his observation, wondering about his understanding, I quickly wrote down what he’d said.
Isn’t this true: There is no fruit if there is no root.
And isn’t this a truth about life? For all the good we might be attempting to sow, if we are also sowing bad seeds — we only have this one life, this one garden to plant in — and we can’t think that the one will not affect the other.
If we keep sowing seeds of anger, and we protect that plant, and allow it to flourish instead of pulling it up like the weed that it truly is — won’t that anger affect the rest of our lives? Deep underneath the soil, those roots will strangle the good things trying to take root, find water and grow.
We might find a convenient tomato cage to put around our bitterness, try to keep it to its own little corner of the garden — but those roots will stretch out under the ground in any direction they choose. And they’ll hinder the growth and flourishing of the good seeds we’re sowing. Deep under the soil, things are happening we can’t see and don’t always understand.
We discovered it quickly in our garden last year: it’s hard to grow good things. It’s easy to grow weeds.
On the way home from a photo session that evening, the Hubs and I were chatting, and I shared about the Bear’s significant comments on that Bible verse that morning. Then a professional athlete came up in conversation who was once the premier player in his sport. He won and won and won, and changed the face of the sport he represented, and then it all came crashing down when a big bright light was shone on his personal life. A mistress, an affair, infidelity — it seemed like all the world had front row seats to watch his world, falling apart.
And we thought long and observed: the roots were all planted in the same soil. For all the care and discipline and focus and effort he showed in excelling in his sport, still the lack of care and focus and discipline in his personal life meant tangled up roots — the bad seeds he sowed in his personal life produced bad fruit, and the good fruit of his professional life was a casualty when it came time to harvest.
For all our efforts, we are still only human at the best of times. We get angry. We get bitter. We get hurt and we react.
What hope is there for any of us, who will only ever fall short?
Paul wrote about it to the Romans, {see ch. 7} his observation about how he did what he did not want to do, and did not do what he did want to do. Sin dwells in me, he wrote. Oh wretched man that I am! Who will save me from this body of death?
I thank God — through Jesus Christ Our Lord!
Here is the hope for all of us: Jesus, who died to sin and died for sin, so that we could be freed from sin to live a new life in Him.
Paul continued this theme in chapter 8 with the glorious news:
There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
We know we fall short. We know we sow amiss. But the law is fulfilled for us in Him — for us who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
Left to our own devices, we will always only ever be a mess. But if we yield our lives to the Spirit of God, Who can dwell in us, and Whose fruit is kindness, gentleness, patience, self-control… there is hope for us still.
We can sow kindness, and reap it. Sow gentleness and receive it in return.
The gardens of our hearts will not likely be weed-free until some glad morning when we’re called to our forever home in Him… but there is hope that even in this life, we can find help to get some weeds out of our hearts, to sow good seeds, and bear good fruit.
The afternoon of our great conversation, there was a marked difference in the Bear’s behavior. He was carefully choosing to say “Yes ma’am.” To listen and immediately do what I’d asked. To be respectful and polite and to share.
You’re being such a thoughtful boy today! I thanked him and praised his efforts.
He quickly replied as if it must’ve been obvious: “I want to sow good seeds.”
xCC
I create resources to help people find deeper, more meaningful relationships with God through pursuing, pondering, and prayer. The "Shop" link above will take you to the home of many of the lovely resources I’ve created to help you keep walking one day deeper with Jesus.